Where we come from, versus where we choose to be

Weather Talk
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Team Summer standard-bearer @CraigHarmann has been flying that standard extra-high in the comments over our unseasonably warm Christmas week weather, and he said something a few days back here that really stuck with me:

It reminded me of something a former coworker at a certain airplane company that makes plane starting with the number “7” said to me 20+ years ago, circa 2002 or 2003-ish, when I was a young and spry sysadmin. The guy’s name was Ron, and Ron had relocated from Seattle to Houston when number-7-airplane-company’s Joint Strike Fighter contract bid hadn’t been selected by the military.

Ron was in his 50s and was a life-long Washingtonian, having grown up in Everett and lived in that area his entire life. One typical Houston August afternoon, when the mercury had tipped the century mark and being outside was an ordeal, another coworker in our shared 4-person cube casually asked Ron how much he regretted leaving Seattle for the swampy bayou of Houston.

“Are you kidding?” Ron replied. (I mean, I’m paraphrasing from a two-decades-and-change-old memory, but this is more or less how it went.) “I can’t get enough of this. I don’t have to shovel snow. I can garden year-round. There’s no ice to drive on. My joints don’t ache, my nose isn’t dry. This is incredible. I should have moved here sooner!”

This kinda broke my brain. How could anyone like this?! But the thought that followed that was, “…..I bet Ron used to think the same thing scraping ice off his windshield at 6am to commute to work.”

I guess, if there’s a point, it’s that hating the climate where you’re from seems to be kinda universal, and I’m a Houston boy born and raised, lol—sick of hurricane season and ready to shovel snow :smiley: The ideal retirement for my wife and me would be some kind of Colorado semi-mountain town, close enough to civilization to have high-speed broadband internet, but otherwise the kind of place where a good snowfall could erase the outside world.

But I don’t begrudge Ron his summers. Houston is the place he chose :heart:

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Back to reality for a couple days, but 2026 is likely to begin on a warm note too
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I was born and raised here in Southeast Texas and have never experienced any other climate. I enjoy the heavy thunderstorms we can get and the occasional Arctic cold snap, and I am glad we don’t usually have to worry about severe tornadoes like they do in the midwest. Believe it or not, I honestly don’t mind the heat and humidity during the summer months as long as its not ridiculous like the summer of 2023 and 2024. Obviously I don’t like the heat and humidity but I understand that there is no getting away from that for atleast 4 to 5 months out of the year.

What I don’t like about our climate currently is the way our window of mild/temperate weather in-between the summer heat and humidity is getting much shorter it seems. Our winters are getting shorter and our summers are getting much longer. And we barely have what you can even call fall and spring anymore. I miss having 3 months of winter. Sure we’ve always had our brief warm spells here and there in winter but not mid 80s and muggy for over a week straight before the next brief cool down. We also didn’t used to tie or break numerous record highs every winter like we do now. What used to happen maybe once a decade is reoccurring every year now.

That is what’s making me want to move to a cooler climate. I generally prefer cooler less humid weather and I feel like that is getting robbed from me more and more as our climate continues to warm with no end in sight.

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I always thought that Southwest Virginia, where I grew up, had pretty decent weather for much of the year. The summers were mostly on the mild side, though there could occasionally be short stretches of hot, humid weather. What I didn’t care for was the bitter cold that we could get in any given winter. Lows near or slightly below 0°F and wind. When I moved here (I was around 30 years old) I didn’t mind the hot, humid summers as much as I do now. For two reasons: age and climate change. I dread summers now, but I am pretty much stuck here. I always thought that the closest thing to perfect weather for me would be San Diego (or anywhere on the coast of Southern California), but I suppose nowhere is 100% perfect.

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Same! The older I get the less tolerant to heat and humidity I’m getting. And yeah pretty much nowhere is perfect weather wise. The west coast of California is widely considered as having the best weather in the country but even they have to worry about earthquakes and the occasional atmospheric rivers and mudslides.

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Since I got called out, let me chime in. So yes, I grew up in Wisconsin. Lived through some LOOOOOOONG cold and snowy winters. That’s probably the worst part of it. The potential is there for so blasted long. Yes, you adjust, but you’re potentially spending much of November through March (with some possible hope that will be crushed at some point) inside. It gets dark early, and it just flat out sucks. My native Texan wife (born in El Paso, grew up in Odessa), spent her last 2 years of college at a private school in Minnesota, swearing off never living north of the Red River again, only to marry me and be in purgatory for 4 years.

Now, I went to college in Nebraska, which was much worse on the wind front. Nebraska, especially Eastern Nebraska, is flat. And the wind just blows. After college, I lived for 4 years in the Pacific Northwest. Portland, to be specific. I enjoyed it because if I did get those moments of missing snow, I could drive up Mt. Hood and see it. But otherwise, winter was mid 40s and rain. I could get behind that. It was a wonderful palate cleanser. Then I moved back to Wisconsin for 4 years. Then to San Antonio for 6, now here in Houston for 11.

My mom is a native Texan, and every summer we’d travel from Wisconsin to Vernon and I was in awe of and loved everything about Texas. After I graduated from college my dad, a pastor, and my mom moved to just outside of Brenham, then retired to Waco. That initially was our draw to Texas. Being closer to family. Growing up, I always preferred less layers than more.

My daughters, 16 and 14, went with us back to Wisconsin in the summer of 2024 for my aunt and uncle’s 60th wedding anniversary. In late June. We were down near Lake Michigan, and even then, it got cool. I’m talking mid 60’s. There were things about Wisconsin they liked (my youngest was fascinated by basements), but they weren’t happy with the cool temps.

So, that’s the reason I live in Texas. Because I’m a private music teacher, running my own business, I could teach anywhere. But I choose here, because it’s home.

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